Plantation workers were today assured that their housing needs would be given priority in the face of development affecting their estates following a meeting between Selangor Mentri Besar Mohd Khir Toyo and plantation workers' representatives.

"He (Khir) gave his assurances that before development takes place, housing for plantation workers would be provided first before anything," said Estate Workers Housing Committee (EWHC) spokesperson Sivarajan Arumugam who met Khir for an hour at the MB's office in Shah Alam together with representatives from 14 estates.

The meeting which began at 9.15am also saw assurances from Khir that in the event laws and regulations are not complied with by developers, plantation workers may voice their grievances to a Special Committee on Squatters and Plantation Workers.

"Khir told us that if any laws was not complied with we should report this to the Selangor MB's office," said Sivarajan.

Low-cost houses

The EWHC had recently spearheaded efforts to gain response from Khir on the plight of estate workers who lacked housing. Activists from the Community Development Centre had held a demonstration on Jan 19 in front of the Sultan Sallehudin Aziz building in Shah Alam in relation to this.

During the meeting, Sivarajan added that the issue of what kind of the housing was also discussed.

"We spoke about providing terrace houses to the plantation workers but he disagreed saying that as far as Selangor was concerned, low-cost housing only included flats and not terrace houses," Sivarajan said.

Another area of contention was EWHC's request for houses costing lower than RM25,000 which Khir also disagreed with.

"He did not agree with the RM25,000 cap and said that the general pricing for low-cost housing was around the RM32,000-RM45,000 range. But we are talking about plantation workers which should be more privileged than buyers in the open market," Sivarajan said.

Unique problems

In a malaysiakini report dated Jan 22, MIC president S Samy Vellu had also commented on the prices of low-cost houses.

"They (the developers) were supposed to build the houses 15 years ago. If you had built a low-cost house 15 years ago, it would have cost only RM11,000. Today, you build a low-cost house, it costs RM18,000.

"This is not the workers' fault. Now they tell the workers 'I am not going to give you the house for RM25,000' and the house price had been raised to RM35,000!" he said.

Samy said poor estate workers - living from 'hands to mouths' - cannot afford to pay RM35,000 to RM45,000 to buy a house.

According to Sivarajan, Khir also told EWHC that if developers were to offer housing, the estate workers should take up the offer first.

When asked on the next step to be taken by EWHC and the estate representatives, Sivarajan said that they would follow up with the detailed reports on the unique problems faced by each estate.

"Since we have been given assurances, we will ensure that detailed reports are presented to the committee set up by Khir," Sivarajan said.

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